


by the light of the sea

by Star_on_a_Staff



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Annette is a terrible driver, Childhood Memories, Developing Relationship, Established Relationship, Established felannie and sylvedes, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Intimacy, Modern Era, Petra has like two lines and I'm so sorry, Road Trips, Soft and Sweet fluff, Spring Break, Sylvain and Mercedes figure things out, Vacation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:13:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25473697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Star_on_a_Staff/pseuds/Star_on_a_Staff
Summary: If they weren’t struggling university students doing their best to live day-to-day without their shitty fathers’ pity money, they would have flown. But air fare will always be air fare, fall of the Empire or not, and so on the first day of the week they all pile into Annette’s sputtering little orange van on a determined quest to make the best out of their weeklong vacation.Or; Sylvain and Mercedes go on a road trip with Felix and Annette and make some new discoveries about themselves. Established Sylvain/Mercedes and Felix/Annette. Modern AU. Commission for the lovely Winter Bear <3
Relationships: Annette Fantine Dominic/Felix Hugo Fraldarius, Sylvain Jose Gautier/Mercedes von Martritz
Comments: 17
Kudos: 52





	by the light of the sea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wint3r_B3ar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wint3r_B3ar/gifts).



> Winter Bear was kind enough to commission me, and she asked for 4000 words of established Sylvedes vacation fluff as felannie give relationship advice (?) on the side. Thank you Winter for your lovely concept!!
> 
> Also ignore any geographical liberties I've taken in this piece. It's all in the name of creativity, y'hear!
> 
> Please enjoy!

i. car crash

If they weren’t struggling university students doing their best to live day-to-day without their shitty fathers’ pity money, they would have flown. But air fare will always be air fare, fall of the Empire or not, and so on the first day of the week they all pile into Annette’s sputtering little orange van on a determined quest to make the best out of their weeklong vacation. 

And predictably, fifty miles into their eight-hour drive, the wheezing van dies a smoky death on the shoulder of Fhirdiad’s biggest southbound highway. 

Armed with a frightening amount of tools that, frankly, looked excessive for an overheating engine, Annette dives headfirst under the hood of her car while Felix holds the jug of coolant and looks appropriately threatening until Sylvain and Mercedes take that as their cue to leave.

Even in the thin sunlight of the spring sun, the weather is languid and warm, the kind that makes you ferment in its sluggishness. As a result, their migratory journey to the neon haven of nourishment is slow, interrupted by Mercedes pointing out a stray wisp of cloud or a particularly interesting model of car. 

“See?” she smiles at him, looping her arm through his, “we would’ve missed out on little moments like this had we flown!”

“If we had flown, Mercedes,” Sylvain takes her arm and pulls her tighter into his body, grinning as she squeaks in surprise, “then we would be lying on a Brigidian beach and making out in the sand instead of walking to a gas station by the highway.”

Mercedes turns her nose up with a chiding frown, and it’s so unbearably cute that he can’t help but kiss the cream-pale skin. “Alright, alright.”

She laughs though, leaning away from him so that they can swing their hands as they walk. “If we had flown, Sylvain, Felix would be curled up in the corner of his resort room while Annie comforts him for the entire week.”

“He would like that,” Sylvain mutters, and he automatically apologizes before Mercedes could tug on his hand again. 

“You’re being prickly today,” she says chidingly, and it’s less of a rebuke than it is verbal concern. “You okay?”

“I’m just…” Sylvain runs his hand through his hair with a sound of brief, vehement frustration, and Mercedes visibly winces at his outburst. He apologizes, again, and hates that he has to do so. 

“This,” he gestures expansively, to the sprawling highway and the snowlit horizon in the distance, “this…it was supposed to be something perfect. Something glorious and exciting. I was hoping, I mean, ever since the bullshit back on campus, to kind of kick back and just relish you, you know? Not…” 

“Not hiking it up a highway in sandals?” Mercedes finishes for him with a bit of a sigh. “I do admit that it’s not the best start to our week, but it’s only been a few hours!” 

She presses back into his side encouragingly. “Maybe this will be the roughest part of our sunlit getaway, something we get to tell the others back home about. And I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time, you know.”

“Yeah. Still…” Sylvain smiles ruefully as he leans into her plush warmth, rubbing at his ankles. “Hey, did you happen to pack any hiking shoes in that enormous bag of yours?”

“Nope!” Mercedes replies cheerfully. “So let’s be sure not to trip over any uneven asphalt or our vacation getaway will have an unfortunate baptism of blood.”

“How violent,” Sylvain mumbles into her shoulder, and Mercedes pushes him off with a merry laugh that makes him perk up a little more from the soft greyness of his stormy mood.

O.O

By the time they trek back to the van, carting their gas station spoils in their arms, Annette is smeared with enough grease to bedaub a wall and sweaty from her exertion, but from the way she waves at them enthusiastically Sylvain knows that their ride is safe. 

“It wasn’t too much work, really.” Annette chatters away cheerfully as they dogpile back inside the car, a half-asleep Felix already having claimed shotgun, “I really have to take Crusher to a real mechanic sometime though.”

“I think there’s a guy in my apartment building who would do it for cheap.” Sylvain pipes up around a mouthful of shitty gas station-hued slushie. “He miiiight have the hots for you though so—”

Felix bolts awake. “Who.”

“I said might!” Sylvain puts his hands in the air defensively, and Mercedes steals the slushy from his lap in the process. “Annette is a very attractive young lady.”

“Many thanks,” Annette says scathingly as Felix mutters something and slinks back down in his seat. She jams her foot onto the gas, and the entire car shakes with the engine’s sudden howl. “Now—to Brigid!”

“To Brigid!” Mercedes cheers, and Sylvain kisses the horrid electric blue off of her lips as the sputtering car crunches off of the high shoulder and joins the southward race towards the promise of sunny beaches, foreign highballs, and the ocean in all of its unbound grey-green splendor.

O.O

ii. hotel

They find a hotel for the night; they still have a few hours left of travel tomorrow, but the sun has sunk well below the horizon and Annette has begun to start nodding off a few times over the wheel, much to the horror of her passengers. 

Let it not be said that Annette Fantine Dominic is not a stubborn person; it takes some wheedling from Mercedes, straightforward reasoning from Felix, and terrified begging from Sylvain, but finally Annette rolls her eyes at all of them and pulls off the highway. 

“I’m totally fine,” she keeps insisting even as they badger the yawning receptionist for a room, “we could’ve made it in one day if Crusher didn’t explode!”

“If we had taken any other form of transportation instead of that rust bucket of yours—”

Sylvain begins, only to be cut off by Annette’s furious finger in his face. 

“That ‘rust bucket’ is the only car with the dignity and trunk space to drive all four of us to Brigid, so kindly shut up about private chartered jets before I put this travel brochure up where the sun doesn’t shine!”

Watchful eyes fixed on the two squabbling redheads, Mercedes drifts over to where Felix is thumbing through his phone with a resigned expression. 

“Will you two be sharing a room for tonight or do you want to split up girls/boys like the old days?” she asks him carefully.

Felix shrugs. “It’s up to you. I’m fine either way, and I’m sure if you ask those two—” he gestures to where Annette and Sylvain are now butting heads, literally and figuratively, “—they would agree.”

Mercedes fiddles her thumbs together. “I mean, I’m not entirely sure—”

Felix gives her a sudden look, sharp in its discernment. 

“We’ve been seeing each other for a grand total of a few weeks, I don’t know—” she bites her lip and begins tracing the swirls of the carpet design on the hotel lobby floor with her foot. “—I’m just not—”

“Listen, it’s fine.” Felix interrupts, making a gesture with his hand that might’ve been interpreted by anyone else as impatient, “We can bunk up roommate style. It’s fine.”

“I don’t want to impose.” Mercedes begins, but Felix just cuts her off. “Listen, Annette and I will be alright. You have to talk about Sylvain about this, not me.”

“I—” Mercedes begins, and then pauses. “I will. Thank you.”

Felix nods curtly, and before the moment can really mellow he makes a beeline to where Annette and Sylvain are all but wrestling in front of the much more awake receptionist.

Mercedes takes a deep breath and looks back up at the ceiling, where the lights are blending towards each other in a strange, swirling haze singular to hotels in the dead of night. They’re very pretty; if she stares at them long enough she can pretend they’re stars in the glimmering expanse over a rim lit beach.

Sylvain wanders over to her as they make their way up to their rooms (third floor, no elevator). The echoing stairwell magnifies their voices, but thankfully Annette’s sleepy humming seems to cover their resulting conversation. 

“Hey.” His usual smile is absent, replaced by slightly nervous concern. He reaches out to take her bags, and she lets him after a beat of hesitance. “You okay?”

Mercedes nods. “I know we got rooms together at the actual resort, but…” she trails off, and understanding dawns in Sylvain’s face. 

“Is this too fast? I keep feeling like we’re rushing things and I’m just not entirely sure about—” Mercedes suddenly realizes with horror that she’s babbling and Sylvain flies to her side, his brown eyes wide in that way she recognizes as actual fear.

“Hey, this is okay, you’re okay, this is okay!” He touches her arm, gentle and almost ginger in his treatment with her, and Mercedes nearly melts. “We can take it as slow as you want, Mercie. I don’t want to rush into anything you don’t want.”

“We’re okay?” she asks, her voice questioning and quiet in the riotous wake of Annette laughing at something Felix said a few steps ahead of them, and the worried creases on Sylvain’s face melt into something like tentative relief.

“Slow, babe.” His voice matches hers in volume, and oh, he sounds handsome like this, earnest and serious and not at all veneered in that way when he’s being flirtatious. “We promised to take it slow, yeah? It’s alright.”

“Okay.” Mercedes smiles up at him, sliding her hand up to where his much larger one rests on her forearm, and strokes his fingers with her own. “Thank you.”

“Of course.” He brings her hand up to kiss her fingers, and she pauses to relish the soft warmth of his mouth, so deliberate, so sweet. By now Felix and Annette are a whole floor above them, her wedges and his sandals punching and slapping the metal grates respectively as Sylvain pulls away to wink at her.

“You’re amazing, you know that?” His laugh is almost bashful, and Mercedes just beams under his affection as she links her arm in his and begins drawing him after her to follow their friends. 

“I kind of do.” She presses her arm into his chest, firm and teasing. “But then again, so are you.” 

O.O

iii. seaside

The following morning, they’re up bright and early for the last few hours of travel through Adrestia. “Bright and early”, according to both Felix and Annette, means “ungodly hours before dawn” to Sylvain and “a little dark for morning prayers” to Mercedes, so they’re well on the road when the sun begins to peek over the horizon.

Sylvain and Mercedes doze on each other’s shoulders as Annette fills the car with her chatter. It’s a soft sort of early morning road, the kind where there aren’t any atrociously loud truckers or noisy sports cars roaring with their bellies to the asphalt. The dew has yet to dry from the weeds bordering the rapidly thinning highway, and the road begins to curve and swerve steadily downwards until the air warms, the sun brightens, and it actually feels like morning. 

They make good time through Adrestia, and it’s only a few hours before Annette shrieks and nearly swerves off of the road in her excitement. “I saw the ocean! Right there, through the treeline!” 

She’s pointing with one hand and steering with the other and Sylvain, clutching his girlfriend and the armrest and praying to a Goddess he’s long lost faith in, thinks faintly, _this is it, this is how we’re all going to die._

Felix pokes his head out of the window and makes a noise of affirmation. “She’s right; over there through the trees.”

Mercedes rolls down the creaky window and sighs at the fresh air whipping past her hair. “Oh, it smells delicious!”

Squeezing open one eye, Sylvain squints at the blurring mess of trees flying past his vision and sits up straighter. 

He’s only seen the icy sea on the borders between Sreng and Gautier territory; churning grey, dull, and altogether boring until stormy days where the unassuming plane of white-capped metal seethes into a frothing, terrifying beast. This ocean, from what he can see in the brief snatches between whirring pines, is a bright, green-blue expanse. Sparkling under the yawning spring sun, it’s a multicolored beauty, and Sylvain can’t take his eyes away from its vibrancy. 

Apparently, neither can Annette, and it’s only thanks to Felix’s quick dexterity that they’re spared a tumbling death off of the cliff. Mercedes clutches onto her sunhat that she is obstinate about wearing even in the car (“it’s part of my summer look, darling!”) and laughs even as rinky-dink Crusher rockets down the road at a blistering speed. _The woman has no fear_ , Sylvain marvels. 

The moment would be almost magical if Sylvain weren’t clinging to his girlfriend and blubbering for mercy while Felix cackles to the sound of Annette’s excitement. But death threats, fears or not, they’ve made their arrival to the very coasts of sunny southern Fódlan, and it’s a gorgeous sight. 

“We’ve got to make it to the ferry before noon!” Annette is saying eagerly as the treeline abruptly ends. The sea lolls before them, this time with no veil of errant pines to shield them from its unmatched splendor, and even dour Felix can’t help but audibly marvel at the sprawling sight. 

“We have time, Annie,” Mercedes chides over every bump and lurch in the road that has them scrambling to hold on as they rocket towards the shore. It’s with no small amount of relief by the time they arrive to find a place to tuck little wheezing Crusher by the docks. 

Actual white-clothed seagulls are screaming and wheeling overhead by the time they climb out of the car. The asphalt of the parking lot is lined with sand, and Sylvain is amazed at how cinematic this whole place looks. 

Annette is eagerly bouncing foot to foot as they unload the trunk; Felix manages to calm her agitation by loading her arms with duffle bags and a beach umbrella that she manages to carry with ease. Sylvain will never not be amazed at Annette’s freakish muscles hiding underneath her cheerily colored romper. 

“Now,” Mercedes says with the deadly briskness of the Designated Mom Friend running on a rapidly deteriorating timetable, “shall we be off?”

“I swear to Sothis Sylvain, if you take a single picture of me right now I will bury your phone six feet under the sand when we get to Brigid,” Felix all but snarls as Sylvain gleefully ignores him and holds his finger on his camera’s shutter.

“Oh, but you look really handsome in that shirt, Felix!” Annette says with such earnest frankness that Felix promptly turns redder than a tomato and starts sputtering as Sylvain dances back to Mercedes with his spoils. 

“You’re incorrigible,” Mercedes giggles, and Sylvain swoops in to kiss her on the cheek as he laughs.

“You know me,” he acquiesces, “but I’m just trying to capture the moment for snowbound Dima and Ingrid back home, you know?”

“It is a pity that they aren’t able to join us,” Mercedes sighs, and Sylvain lets his arm fall about her waist and tug her closer. 

“I, on the other hand, like how cozy we’ve been lately,” he purrs into her ear, and warmth unfurls in his belly as Mercedes blushes pink and just swats at him lamely, letting her fingers curl on his arm in a facsimile of protest. “Oh, you.”

It’s such a perfect little moment, the strong sun casting a shadow over her lidded eyes and her sly cerulean eyes, that Sylvain would’ve swooped her into a kiss right there and then if it weren’t for Felix’s judging glare on the small of his back, which he can feel burrowing into his skin like a hungry mosquito. 

“Are you two done?” The bite of Felix’s words would hurt a lot more if Annette weren’t hanging off of his arm with a huge smile that could melt the ice caps of the frozen north. “We have a ferry to catch.”

“Quite done.” Mercedes pries her arm out of his, and Sylvain can’t help but feel lonely for a split second before she takes his hand more securely in hers, warm and comforting. “Let’s be off, shall we?”

Annette’s wedges beat out a frantic tattoo on the pavement as she’s bouncing up and down in the direction of the wharf. “Come _on_ , you guys!”

“Next year, we do this solo.” Sylvain mutters into the weave of Mercedes’ sunhat, and when her hum of thoughtful agreement rumbles through him, the resulting giddiness is enough to propel him after Annette and Felix’s excitable wake of chatter and brooding contentment. 

O.O

iv. ferry

The ferry pushes off from the docks as the sun crests over the sky, the enormous red and white wheel throwing up froth with incessant rhythm as the seagulls escort them out to sea. The shoreline disappears rapidly behind them, and soon it’s but a faint squiggle on the horizon until it’s swallowed in azure. 

Mercedes hangs on to the side of the railing and marvels at how _bright_ everything is. The feeling of brisk wind slapping at her hair, sunlight tossing and dancing on every splash and upheaval in the water…it’s almost dreamlike, and it brings back memories; faint, broken ones, of sunlit seasides and her mother’s arms teaching her how to swim for the very first time. 

She couldn’t have been any older than 7. Emile was far more interested in the crabs snapping from the sand than the water, but Mercedes would never forget the smell of salt-laden air and damp, aging wood of the distant piers. 

Faerghus is beautiful in its grey, snowy ferocity, but there will always be a part of her that revels in the sight of glimmering, light laden sea.

Felix groans from behind her, and suddenly Mercedes remembers with a giggle that not all of her companions seem to share her nostalgic love for the ocean. 

“I heard crackers help cure seasickness,” Annette frets as she fans her boyfriend’s suffering face with her travel brochure. “Maybe lemon water? Why not lemonade?”

“I wouldn’t know.” Sylvain mumbles from his chaise, a magazine with a bouncing buxom bikini model posing on the cover draped over his face. “I’ve never been seasick before.”

“Focus on a point on the horizon, Felix,” Mercedes suggests helpfully, and Felix just makes a wounded noise as he curls in on himself. 

“Definitely crackers.” Annette decides firmly, kissing Felix’s forehead before straightening and solemnly passing over fanning duties to Mercedes. “I’ll be right back!”

“Don’t trip over and fall into the sea.” Sylvain plucks the magazine off of his face and peers at Annette with a shit-eating grin. “We can’t lose both of you two lovebirds to the ocean’s watery embrace.”

“You’re terrible.” Annette scowls as she scurries off, but Mercedes catches her clinging carefully to the railing as she disappears inside the belly of the ferry. 

Mercedes draws up a seat next to Felix to earnestly fulfill her role of fan bearer. “How are you feeling?”

“Like shit.” Felix mumbles from behind the crook of his elbow. “This was a terrible idea.”

“It’s not going to be a long trip.” Mercedes reassures him with every beat of the travel brochure. “Just hold on a little longer and we’ll be there in a jiffy, alright?”

“You can quit it with that saccharine tone, thanks,” Felix growls, and Mercedes wisely closes her mouth as Sylvain flips over to give him the stink-eye.

“Take your mind off things and think of something happy.” Mercedes scoots her chair over and rearranges the drapes of her sundress. “Think about the resort we’re heading towards! Think about how fortunate we are to have made wonderful friends with Petra, who has reserved an entire wing for us to stay in for a few days!”

“Mmm.” 

“Think about all the alcohol,” Sylvain croons, lounging backwards exquisitely as he holds up his hand to gesture expansively. “Think of the sand beneath your body, the shifting tides, the warmth of your lover by your side as you sip on cocktails with names you can’t even pronounce!”

“Do _not_ try to describe your date plans to me right now, Gautier,” Felix says in a deadly voice, terrifying even at his greenest and most helpless. “Now leave me alone, I’m going to try sleeping this off.”

“Good luck, buddy.” Sylvain slaps him on the shoulder (Felix grunts but takes the blow with unusual apathy) and stands to wander to the railings of the ferry, sipping long and significant draughts of his drink while making eyes at Mercedes. 

“You take care now,” she says cheerily to Felix, who just rolls his eyes at her, and stands to join Sylvain by the railing. 

He’s leaning attractively on the railing with his button-down shirt unfastened at the collar in a deliciously teasing way, but Mercedes just bats at him with Annette’s travel brochure reprovingly. 

“You are insatiable.” She joins him by the railing, marveling at how close the churning depths of the emerald sea seemed to be from this side of the ship. “Oh, how lovely!”

Sylvain laughs and burrows close to her. “Even the ocean can’t hold a candle to your utter beauty, Mercedes.”

Mercedes laughs, but it’s quieter as she places a hand on his on the railing and looks carefully into his eyes.

“We’ve talked about this,” she says softly, under the whirring of the ferry wheel and the hiss of ocean spray.

Sylvain’s smile drops and his fingers tighten around hers. “Shit…I know. I’m sorry.” He squeezes out a hesitant grin at her, broken in its beauty. “Old habits die hard, huh?”

Mercedes takes a hand and runs it through his hair, taming the rakish mess that he’s made out of his auburn curls. “It’s fine. You’ve been so sweet to me lately and I love it…I’d like to hear things from your heart and not from your tongue.”

“I’m sorry. I meant every word,” Sylvain says in a lower tone, tracing his fingers up and down her cheek with a gentle insistence that pushes at her insides like the tides pull at the seashore. “I do, I really do, Mercedes.”

She kisses his palm. “I know. I know you do.”

“Leave it to me to be too overwhelmingly dashing.” Sylvain smirks ruefully at her, and Mercedes shakes her head at him, leaning over to carefully button up his shirt, which has been whipping at her torso for the whole duration of their starboard conversation up until now.

“You’ll always look more handsome to me with honesty on your face.” She buttons him up with practiced alacrity and when her fingers reach his collarbone, Mercedes tiptoes to kiss his chin. “See? Like this.”

Sylvain bends his head down so she doesn’t have to strain to reach him. “Like this?”

“Yeah.” Mercedes tastes the salt on his skin and marvels at the taste; nostalgia and the sweeping sensation of his skin twining to form an entirely new and lovely memory as Sylvain chuckles beneath her ministrations. “Just like this.”

O.O

v. stars

They dock just as the sun begins to fall beneath the horizon, and it’s not without some great amount of relief as they tromp off the ferry and step onto the lower, lusher land of Brigid. 

Waving them down in a pair of dark ombre sunglasses and a subtly cut dress of dark black is the Brigidian princess herself, Petra, who escorts them merrily through customs without so much as batting an eye. The sea of tourists and locals part before her as she leads them to a non-descript car that looks infinitely more put together than Annette’s crumpling Crusher. 

“I know you must be very tiring after your trip, but the drive around the sealine of our archipelago will be worth the waiting!” Petra says affably as she drives them down the rim lit shoreline. “The stars will soon come out, and they’re so clear this far south.”

“I haven’t stargazed since I was a little girl!” Mercedes claps her hands together in her seat in the front, and Sylvain casts a curious look to where she’s gazing out the window on her side of the car, her eyes lit with something that looks almost like longing as the sun begins to dip below the horizon. 

For the entirety of their trip down south, Mercedes had an almost absent air despite her affectionate excitement at being able to travel with him on a true vacation since they’ve started dating. He thinks back to the hotel, and the ferry, and begins to wonder. 

“Hey.” Annette jabs his side, and Sylvain nearly jumps out of his skin. “Sothis, Annette!”

“You’re looking real frowny.” She mimics his face, frown and all, and Sylvain rearranges his features to his most devastatingly handsome and flashes her a winning smile. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Miss Dominic.”

“Eesh, quit it with that face.” Annette hushes her voice as she glances over to where Felix is slumped over on her shoulder, sleeping silently and completely out of it. “Felix makes that same face when he’s not being serious.”

“I don’t know how to feel about that,” Sylvain says honestly. 

“What I’m saying—” Annette lowers her voice and gestures with her chin towards where Mercedes and Petra are chatting amiable together in the front seat, “—is to talk to Mercie instead of staring at her for once! You’ve been looking at her like she’s grown a second head during the entire time on the ferry.”

“I have not,” Sylvain says indignantly.

“You have.” Annette pokes him again, more gently this time. “So talk to her! Mercie likes talking things out, otherwise things will get super awkward and nobody wants that, right? Trust me, I’m a little of an expert at these sorts of things.”

Sylvain stares at her upturned freckled nose for a good moment, before he reaches down and tweaks it, grinning as she squeaks and swats at his hand half-heartedly. “You’re a goddess-send, you know that, Ann?”

Annette smiles up at him, sweet and smug at once. “Any time, Sylvain.”

O.O

The resort that Petra drives them to is built almost onto the beach. The windows, huge bay floor-to-ceiling affairs that are curtained with flowered silks, open up onto the sand where the ebb and flow of sandy dunes cave into the grasping hands of the sea.

Here, the ocean is bluer, the sky blacker, and so the stars stand out in sharp relief above them all as Sylvain and Mercedes settle into their beachside suite adjacent to where Felix and Annette were situated. 

Mercedes tugs on his sleeve before they turn in for the night, and Sylvain glances down to where she’s shrugging on a jacket and smiling at him expectantly. 

“If you don’t mind, I would like to take you stargazing,” she says sweetly. 

Sylvain raises an eyebrow. “At this time of night?”

Mercedes does the closest thing to an eye roll that she’s physically capable of. “Well, when else will we watch them, Sylvain?”

He’s rendered silent when she reaches out and takes him firmly by the hand, helpless but to meekly follow in her wake outside. The sand whispers around their feet as Mercedes brings him to where the driftwood piles up on the seashore, ocean waves lapping at the darkened shore beneath them. 

They sit by the piles of driftwood at the edge of the shoreline, and the weather is so tropical that the ocean breeze brings only a soft chill to their skin as they watch the slow, silvered smear of the stars wheeling overhead. 

“You know,” Mercedes begins after a beat of silence, “I never really thought of the ocean until just recently.”

Sylvain glances down at her; her upturned face is lit by the moon and a thoughtful expression that seems almost melancholy. 

“The last time I visited, it was with my mother and Emile. I remember learning how to swim, and how he used to chase the crabs on the shore line.” Her voice is lilting, soft, almost soothing. “It’s been so many years, but I’ve forgotten about it until now.”

“You must’ve had a good time then,” Sylvain replies in that same hushed tone. It feels sacrilege to speak normally under the quiet lull of her memory. 

“It was,” Mercedes acquiesces with a fond smile. She turns to him, and his breath is taken away by how ethereal and lovely she looks in this half shadow light. “I’d love to make more with you, Sylvain.”

Sylvain draws in a breath. 

“I’ve been…” Mercedes fiddles with the laces on her shirt. “…hesitant at trying to move on from that past. It’s been difficult for me, but I’m trying. This is…what we have right now?” Her smile gets shy, and it’s the most attractive thing Sylvain’s ever seen. “I like what we have now.”

Sylvain swallows. “Mercedes…” 

She beams at him, a watery smile lifting her lips, and so Sylvain gravely takes her hands and kisses the ridges of her knuckles, tracing over every indentation and groove with deliberate care. 

“Thanks,” he says against her fingers, “I really like what we have now too. I would like to keep it, if that’s okay with you.”

“Of course. Let’s not waste this opportunity together.” Mercedes smiles at him again, and he would never get tired of seeing that sight even if he lives to be a thousand years old, “after all, we came all this way, didn’t we?”

“Yeah,” Sylvain chuckles, tugging her deeper into his arms as the stars twinkle and smile at them from their dark black expanse above. “yeah, we did.”

.

_fin_

**Author's Note:**

> they had a wonderful week of beaches, highballs, and sandy smooches as aforementioned <3
> 
> Thank you again Winter Bear for this amazing idea! I hope I was able to do your request justice!
> 
> Come find me on twitter to shriek about Sylvain/Mercedes and Felix/Annette shenanigans: https://twitter.com/clairvoyancehsu


End file.
